Recent obituaries published in both the New York Times and the Washington Post celebrated Dr. Lamin Sanneh'a enormous scholarly contributions to religion in Africa. He emphasized the role of African missionaries as well as European ones in the spread of Christianity throughout the continent.

There is mismatch between what the government asks and expects South African National Defense Forces (SANDF) to do and the money allocated to carry out its missions. The SANDF budget declined again for this fiscal year and stands at only around 1 percent of GDP. (By contrast, the budget for education is just under 5 percent of GDP.)

He recalls the popular challenge now underway against Omar al-Bashir’s rule in Sudan; the deaths of Kofi Annan, the first African secretary General of UN, and Winnie Mandela, a flawed leader of the South African liberation movement; the highly positive emergence of the reform-minded Abiy Ahmed, the Ethiopian prime minister; and the international attention to Congolese surgeon Denis Mukwege, who won a Nobel Peace prize for his work with rape victims.

On January 6, the Nigerian security services raided the offices of the Daily Trust, one of Nigeria’s largest circulation newspapers, apparently angry at its published reports about the upcoming army move against a Boko Haram faction, the Islamic State West Africa (ISWA), and recent military defeats.

Former President Shehu Shagari passed away on December 28, 2018, in Abuja at the age of 93. He was the only president of Nigeria’s Second republic, which lasted from 1979 to 1983, when his government was overthrown in a military coup by then-General Muhammadu Buhari, who is now Nigeria’s democratically elected president of the country’s Fourth Republic.

Perhaps for most in the developed world, the image of African poverty is a teeming urban slum, such as can be found in Lagos, Kinshasa, or Luanda. Yet, as Professor Leif Brottem discusses, rural poverty is more widespread and more extreme. He notes that by 2030, some nine out of ten of those living in extreme poverty will be sub-Saharan African, disproportionately rural residents of fragile states with weak institutions and often wracked with conflict.